Cry, The Beloved Country CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY may be longer remembered than any other novel of 1948, but not because it fits into any pattern of the modern novel. It stands by it- self; it creates rather than follows a tradition. It is at once unashamedly innocent and subtly sophisticated. It is a story; it is a prophecy; it is a psalm. It is passionately African, as no book before it had been; it is universal. It has in it ele- ments of autobiography; yet it is selfless. Let the reader discover the story for himself. Alan Paton tells something of its pre-publication history in his own author’s introduction. The rest is still living history. In the United States, where it first saw print, the book had a small advance sale—3300 copies. It had no book-club fanfare in advance of publication; it never reached the top of the bestseller lists. But it made its way. People discovered it for themselves. They are still discovering it